


You, Here

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Friendship, Headcanons and Interpretations and Stuff, Hemospectrum, Hope, Introspection, M/M, Pesterquest, Pesterquest spoilers!!!!, Second Chances, Swearing, some talk about the, this takes place after Pesterquest's true end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:06:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24932743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: “Always asking a question, and I don’t wanna know — like the wind across strings that had finally let go.  And the people you love but you didn’t quite know: they’re the places that you wanted to go.” — “People as Places as People,” Modest MouseKarkat stops by Gamzee’s hive.
Relationships: (pale), Gamzee Makara & Karkat Vantas, Gamzee Makara/Karkat Vantas, potential - Relationship
Comments: 14
Kudos: 50





	You, Here

**Author's Note:**

> You know.... I thought maybe I’d be content to write that Humanstuck interpretation of Karkat and Gamzee eventually meeting up based on Pesterquest stuff, but I ended up writing this, too. :’) :’) :’) Honestly I love Pesterquest... and I really appreciate the idea of this locked reality. This was cathartic to write, and I typed a draft of it out all in one sitting when I was supposed to be doing about a million other things. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy it~ I’m sorry for any and all mistakes I might’ve made/stuff I might've gotten wrong. 
> 
> I also hope you’ve been staying safe and doing as well as possible!!! Thank you.
> 
> The absolutely AMAZING artist Ceabu drew a picture for this story, along with some of my other fics!!! <3 <3 <3 I'm wondering if I shoulda linked it right away (what's the protocol, here, anyway???) but https://ceabu.tumblr.com/post/622664873516711936/u-ever-love-a-fic-writers-thatsrightdollface <\-- Her art is so lovely, right?!

So, here’s what Karkat Vantas understood about the “locked” universe he and his friends had found themselves living in: this was a chance to be okay, gathered up and fragile, held protectively in a Reader’s cosmic arms so that the narrative didn’t get to devour them. 

Yeah. A “Reader’s” arms — and isn’t that just a fucking existential crisis waiting to happen? There was a lot of talk about canon going around lately... about truth, and relevance, and whatever the hell else. Essentiality? Hm. Karkat and his friends were stepping off into the deep end way beyond canon, but their Reader... their friend who had consumed the sour candy apple brightness of the GREEN SUN for them all... had hinted in a soft, uncannily-crackling voice that before this deviation they’d been hatched into a story without happy endings. Without happy endings, whatever they did: one of the creators in a plush green between-space full of staring mirrors had told them so.

Karkat’s friend the Reader had tried to explain the unexplainable, once, to help everyone understand why the Game was well and truly gone, and to prevent worried questions about why they were half-consumed by sickly green light, now, _and_ to build off of what this human called Dirk Strider had to say about a different, canon version of himself successfully cutting reality into pieces (???) with a fucking sword (???) or something. What happened inside this locked timeline didn’t have to mean shit to reality, but it meant everything to the Reader. They loved their friends, whatever dark secrets they carried around about the people reality had been conspiring to build them into. They loved this faint-flickering impossible snowglobe of causality, and fuck it, maybe that was alright. 

Maybe the Scourge Sisters (plus Eridan) really _would_ be able to make a difference toppling Alternia’s blood caste hierarchy, here; maybe Feferi really could commune with the Dark Carnival and rise up against Her Imperious Condescension in a way that mattered. Not to canon, no. But to life, the way Karkat knew it. He wasn’t exactly good at “optimism,” he might have told you, but then... alternatively, maybe he was fucking great at it. Really maxed out his “unfounded optimism” stats, even trying to survive as long as he had as a mutantblood in the Condesce’s Alternia. Watching movies and teleporting around wildly with new friends; shouting opinions and slithering out of his recuperacoon to face another night again and again. Karkat did all of that, even knowing he might have to hide away from imperial drones at any time. Even knowing the way so much of their planet had been conditioned to reject him; even knowing his friends could technically fail, regardless of all the Reader had done. 

Maybe Karkat was trying to believe they wouldn’t fail, though, despite everything. That this whole baffling situation could honestly become the stolen happy ending they weren’t supposed to have. (Ha — suck it, inevitability. He guessed.) The chance for a happy ending was what the Reader guarded them for, and that same chance had brought Karkat here, right now. Some of the craftier members of his friend group had banded together with the Reader to make teleportation-artifacts, harnessing some of that GREEN SUN/narrative device/whatever-the-actual-fuck energy so they could blip around their locked timeline pretty easily even when the Reader was busy in some other time or space. Vriska’s teleportation-artifact was worked into her trademark red shoes, for example, so she could take a step forward and arrive across the planet. Like a better pair of thousand-league boots in a FLARPing campaign. Karkat’s was fused into his sickles, so that he only had to grab for one thing if he felt threatened. Fight and flight, both in the same grip. 

Karkat’s palm was trembling against the hilt of that sickle right fucking now, you know? His insides were still sparking from the teleportation/irrelevant narrative potential of his journey, and for the second time in all his sweeps he was smelling sea salt mixed with the wafting, relentless sweetness of a baking sopor slime pie. He was close, now. 

The very first friend-or-not-friend Karkat had ever told the Reader he wanted to meet in person; a clown with wide, dizzy smiles Karkat had heard Sollux describe with so much disgust. It had been frustrating, watching Sollux throw away what Karkat wanted but couldn’t work up the nerve to take: Gamzee Makara’s companionship, in person, here on this lonely beach. In the shadow of his hive, sandstone walls shaking precariously in the wind. A tipsy, vague-eyed laughing place. Gamzee felt like a tower of cards, always ready to fall. Gamzee felt like a juggling trick that Karkat couldn’t quite follow, unnerving but so difficult to look away from. But Gamzee had also gone obediently where Karkat asked him to, when he’d tried to friend-matchmake him with Sollux way back when. He’d come back online all proud of himself, letting Karkat know he’d followed most of his orders pretty damn close. 

Karkat was here, whether he understood Gamzee or not. Whoever Gamzee could have become, down those strange canon roads the Reader murmured about, sometimes, if a troll got them at just the right moment. Gamzee would live a different story, here. He, like the rest of them, could be okay.

Karkat had been afraid Gamzee’s smile might shift at the smell of his blood, becoming human-Halloween-mask sinister, the first time the Reader teleported the two of them directly into his sticky, shameless hive. Karkat had been afraid the kind, gushy things Gamzee typed out about him hadn’t meant as much as he’d thought maybe they could... or Gamzee might cull him even just by accident. Especially if he was startled, right? If he found some strange troll in his hive and reacted without thinking the way so many people could, violence like a muscle spasm. Karkat never really let himself get too physically close to other trolls, obviously. Especially highbloods, even if he ended up messaging with this high-out-of-his-mind one nearly every day. He’d panicked. He wouldn’t say it out loud even now, not to anyone but the Reader who had seen it happen (and had bled bright red equally-mutated blood to prove it, when Karkat scratched their arm.) But he’d been bubbling over with terror like a shaken-up bottle of Faygo as Gamzee’s footsteps shuffled closer, and he hadn’t been able to make it back here since. Embarrassing simile, but true enough. 

Even before transportation was a complete non-issue, Gamzee had written rambly, affectionate essays about why Karkat should come and visit him, or why it really wouldn’t be any kinda motherfucking trouble to just fold himself the fuck up into his tiny honking clown car like a messiahs-blessed ninja and head on over to Karkat’s hive anytime of night. They could’ve met for food, or ridden out to visit their good bro Sollux, or... Gamzee didn’t know. It was possible he barely cared. He wanted Karkat to want to see him. Maybe it had always been that simple. 

And now they could travel anywhere in a shuddering cosmic second, if they wanted to; and now Karkat really hadn’t had any excuse. Gamzee’d never said anything about it, mind you. He thought sometimes it was normal for people to say hi by flying dramatically away in a blaze of furious lightning, after all... he had shed his typing quirk for a minute so Karkat would keep talking to him, like a barkbeast rolling over on his back. When Gamzee’d asked if Karkat wanted to come play Fiduspawn with him, Tavros, and this guy called Jake English, Karkat had been busy. When Gamzee asked if Karkat wanted to bake with him and the human Jane Crocker — who’d said she had some ideas for other miraculous things he could put together besides his sopor pies, even if she _was_ emotionally boycotting her diabolical earthly confectionary empire right about then — Karkat had pretended not to see the message until it was too late to join. It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to go, either time. It fucking _wasn’t that._ But still, Gamzee hadn’t known that truth. Maybe he wondered, somewhere in the seething, deep dark wicked clown places of himself, if Karkat thought he was as ridiculous as he said. How could Karkat ever know for sure that Gamzee meant his warmth, his praise? How could Gamzee ever know for sure that Karkat saw him as more than a bad joke, with a punchline that might never make sense? 

It might sound stupid, but Karkat had wondered if Gamzee could be — ugh. If Gamzee could be his moirail, someday. Don’t tell anyone. It was a feeling... a fleeting thought as he was falling asleep, even if he might have scoffed at the idea later on. But still, if things went badly between them now it could be like slamming a door, locking it, and... and Karkat would... it was difficult to admit. Karkat would miss him. That had been part of why he was so out of it, when he’d nearly met Gamzee face-to-face that first time. This could be an ending: a goodbye, before Karkat ever admitted he actually wanted to get to know this clown. 

This evening, early, Karkat had messaged Gamzee, “IF I CAME BY YOUR HIVE LATER, WHAT WOULD YOU DO?” And then he’d gone about his night, keeping his husktop open and waiting. Glancing at it every now and then, suspiciously, like it might unfold itself into a Subjugglating stranger and cull his ass right then and there. But Gamzee woke up late, Karkat knew. When he wrote back, “I wOuLd Be So FuCkIn JoYfUl, My MoSt ReClUsIvE fRiEnD!!!! :oD dIdN’t YoU mOtHeRfUcKiNg KnOw? JuSt SaY wHeN,” his point stubs were still so sticky with sopor slime they kept catching on the letters. He had to keep going back and methodically correcting his quirk. But he’d wanted to respond so quickly, see — but he’d said he would bake something up special for Karkat, if he wanted. He’d been trying not to be jealous, everyone else getting to hang out with his best motherfucking friend. Fucking schedules, right? AhAhA yOu KnOw, BrOtHeR. dAmN. 

Karkat had asked the Reader how Gamzee would react to him in person — the Reader knew everything about their canon realities, after all. Karkat had tried recanting the question about as soon as it was spoken, mind you, but the Reader just said... softly, looking like maybe they’d regret this soon enough... that they could care about each other so much. The Reader believed in that, genuinely, and before they realized what they were doing they started describing how genuinely at peace Gamzee had looked in Karkat’s arms at one heartbreakingly crucial point, despite — 

Despite —

And that was when the Reader cut off. Despite whatever else it was that happened in canon, that screaming, inky-tentacled fate the Reader wanted so badly to protect them from. The truly terminal paths for Gamzee Karkat would never see, now, and those religiously capricious obligations that might stay eternally sleeping. The other sides of Karkat, too, and the important plot points he was bound to miss... the ways everyone he pitied could forsake each other, given enough time. 

Karkat stood before Gamzee’s hive, now, and the restless blur of waves on sand crashed on and on and on. He could have blipped away, again, now. Gamzee might notice it, but he wouldn’t stop him. Karkat could have sat outside for hours, frozen still and internally screaming in paragraphs and paragraphs at himself. Mental walls of grey text that would make Gamzee wince, maybe say, “aW, nO, c’MoN... yOu BeLiEvE tHaT nOiSe?”

Karkat messaged Gamzee that he was here, and the door swung open like Gamzee’d been waiting on the other side. Barely breathing, the way Laughsassins got sometimes: still as holy statues, until suddenly they struck like bad dreams. His face split apart into a smile that felt almost huger than his nervously-smeared-on clown paint. Karkat didn’t understand him — maybe couldn’t ever completely understand him — but... right then... it felt like maybe Gamzee could help him get close enough. Maybe here, at least, they’d make this work. 

Gamzee had baked Karkat something without sopor to start with, if he wanted. He’d been messaging with Jane to make sure he got the recipe just right; he gestured languidly for Karkat to follow him inside, if he up and wanted. He was halfway sober, Karkat could tell. Maybe he’d wanted to be as aware as he ever was, for this... maybe this meet-up was a huge fucking deal to Gamzee, too. He kept scanning Karkat’s face, as if trying to prove to himself that he was honestly, completely real. Not a half-seen seagoat lusus mirage at the edge of the ocean. Not a drug-hazy miracle, here and then gone Subjugglator-fast. 

If Gamzee could sense Karkat’s warmth, with all that forbidden candy-bright blood churning away inside him, he didn’t seem surprised by it. A couple of Karkat’s friends had already known, he’d recently learned... and maybe Gamzee was one of them? Maybe. Karkat had no idea how to ask. Gamzee swayed on his floppy clown feet just a little bit, and Karkat reached out a sweaty hand to steady him before letting that hand drop back to his side. There were sopor-stained patches along the walls, here and there, that showed Gamzee sometimes led himself around leaning against the crooked edges of his hive. Gamzee had piles of crinkly, Faygo-smeary comics on the table and those fucking honk horns everywhere; he had a juggling club slammed into the wall, probably by accident. The place was incredibly unsanitary, but also so much like Karkat had imagined it. Was he relaxing, now, a little relieved, a little _pitying_? Goddammit. If things kept going along like this, he might catch Gamzee without thinking about it the next time he tripped. When somebody called Gamzee Makara his friend, Karkat might get to a point where he forgot to correct them... and then what? When he went to play video games with the humans John and Dave, would Karkat ever bring this gangly joker along? To keep an eye on him, you know. Just because he worried about him, and wanted to trust him. Just because he _did_ honestly want him around. 

The idea felt more possible than it ever had, seeing how eagerly Gamzee led Karkat deeper into his hive, eyes gone so sticky-soft. Despite the honk horns, despite the potential futures their Reader knew. Gamzee drawled on about whether or not Karkat looked like he’d imagined him — both yes and no, only his explanation wandered around a lot and kept tumbling back in circles. The way he talked was so familiar, after all this time. Karkat should have realized it would be.


End file.
